Page:Philosophical Review Volume 31.djvu/494

482 himself from the apriorism of ancient science, which we have seen many times exemplified in Aristotle's writings. Apriorism is condemned as 'anticipations of the mind'—idola. In regard to the experience crystallised in popular opinion Bacon, like Aristotle, recognised dangers and subjects it to this limitation "Verus enim consensus is est, qui ex libertate judicii (re prius explorata) in idem conveniente consistit." Also like Aristotle, and for the same reasons, Bacon finds praise for the atomistic school of Democritus. Again like Aristotle, Bacon emphasises the need to observe common, trvial, mean things in nature. "eque propterea polluitur naturalis historia; sol enim aeque palatia et cloacas ingreditur, neque tamen polluitur." Unlike Aristotle, Bacon succeeds in avoiding the apriorism which separates celestial from terrestrial phenomena. To the former the four elements were sufficient to explain terrestrial phenomena, but the dignity of the stars required a fifth element, i.e., quintessence.

While both Aristotle and Bacon emphasise attention to the facts of experience, the facts observed by Aristotle are usually of a different nature from those observed by Bacon. Aristotle was a biologist, Bacon a physicist. Aristotle observed the characteristics of organic bodies, animals and plants; Bacon observed the characteristics of inorganic bodies. Aristotle, unlike Bacon, failed in any way to foreshadow the modern science of chemistry. Constant in his realisation of the importance of observing the facts of experience, Bacon likes to compare sciences to pyramids rising from the broad plain of empirical fact. "There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general